


Precession

by LaduSwala



Category: Bas Lag - China Miéville
Genre: Epic Bromance, Giant Spiders, M/M, My First Fanfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-06 01:19:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaduSwala/pseuds/LaduSwala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armada is awash in political turmoil, the Haunted Quarter is crawling with something particularly ghoulish, and the city itself may be on a crash course towards the most wicked whirlpool in the Swollen Ocean.  Can two friends working alone save their city from destruction?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Grand Gears

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place (long) before the events of The Scar, in a Pre-Lovers era for Garwater. 
> 
> Apologies for an overabundance of profanity. Eventual violence, smut, and ridiculous pseudoscience. Projected length: Unknown. Projected number of chapters: Unknown. Projected number of ridiculously epic fight scenes: A LOT.

Somewhere, not far – behind that bookshelf? – the pattering of tiny feet. Or was it just there, in the second to last aisle? Shadows flickered across the spines of books, light playing off flaking gilt and cracked leather, and the words of men long dead, given corporeality in the characters of languages no longer spoken. At the small desk, the island of light in the spacious room, the library’s sole patron raised his oil lamp in suspicion. He removed his reading glasses but did not bother to stand. Again, the faint sound of organic movement, a skittering across the floor. Then silence. Oppressive.

The man peered briefly down the center row of shelves, alert but dispassionate, merely tuning his ear to extraneous noise… and with a shake of his head returned to his study and the scroll in front of him. Mice, he thought, or otherwise. It would not require much suspension of disbelief to attribute to the Grand Gears Library its own weird ecology. The man had found, in one of the least frequented reading rooms, the descendants of book lice the size of small terriers, engorged to bursting with book binding glue, leaving spiced metabolite trails along abandoned dictionary spines. Even he was reluctant to go searching through that nesting congregation – and there was very little that the man truly feared. He had stared down death from an early age, and it had long since failed to faze him. All other dangers simply failed to live up to death, the great nil – fear was a matter of practicality, in the end. He never balked at peril, but did abide by a personal maxim: “Don’t go seeking trouble, for it will surely find you first.”

The man glared back down through his spectacles at the crumbling parchment, furrowing his brow in concentration. Here was trouble unlooked for – always trouble in these opaque texts! In the opacity, a blossoming of possible interpretations, a textual void burgeoning with meaning. The ancients were always playing games with Uther Doul. And the soft silent passage of night in the library overlooked him, while more than one nocturnal intelligence scrutinized him in quiet curiosity or with feebly calculating caution, as Uther Doul scrutinized the Verses of the Dawn.

When scuffling pad-feet worried the wooden floorboards again, Uther paid them no mind. Had hours passed? An imperceptible diminishment of oil in the lamp – a continent spanned in scrawled words.

Uther became aware that there was someone reading over his shoulder. He felt no hint of threat. It occurred to him in the way that a half forgotten melody creeps into the mind, bypassing consciousness to birth a half-hummed song - pleasant, but unexpected. Turning over a few loose leaves of paper, he found the passage he was looking for and began to softly quote:

“Bring me one who breathes without breath, who sings without voice, who sips sun-cordial in the in-between land, but dreams in the un-land that lies between none. This one who has never hailed the dawn may see the shattering tomorrow.”

Uther paused. “What do you suppose that to mean, Deadman Brucolac?”

“Liveman Doul,” came the chuckled answer. “Ah, you flatter me. Godsdamned scholar. You know my suppositions on such texts are quite meaningless.” There was a flicker of breath at Uther’s ear. “And oh, you flatter me. Did you pick that one out in advance?”

The watcher materialized in a lazy blink, shaking off a stray shadow with a careless flick of the wrist. A tall, lithe man now sat opposite Uther Doul at the desk, legs crossed, idly tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair. He was dressed in the manner of a city gentleman, with a well-cut coat and silk cravat that signaled wealth and class. The savage glint that flickered in his eye, however, warned otherwise. Uther acknowledged the newcomer with a studied nod.

“It would be a lie to say I was not expecting you.”

“Ha! Word gets around.” The Brucolac nodded in Uther’s direction, fidgeting fingers tapping their way across one scroll in a pile of many. “Especially when you waltz into town, my little refugee. And not a greeting to anyone! Not even your old friend! It’s a good thing I know where you like to hide, eh?” Mock indignation was well suited to the Brucolac’s boyish face, with its improbable splash of freckles. “Though of course, I didn’t come just to look for you, you smug bastard.”

“Oh?” Uther peered over his spectacles. He leaned forward slightly, and in him the small movement was pronounced – he had remained in his natural pose, relaxed but preternaturally still, since the Brucolac had appeared.

“No. No, why should I come looking for you?” The Brucolac hissed. His playful ire took on a sour tone. “What reason should I have to seek out the saddest fuck in Armada, whose idea of a good time at three past midnight is to be, what, reading shitty poetry in the godsforsaken library? Who doesn’t even have the human decency to be asleep at this hour. Why should I give three shits about the most ungrateful excuse for a pirate I have ever seen, when he doesn’t even bother to say hello to his only friend. For more than a week. Were you planning on never seeing me at all?” In the prolonged silence that followed, there unfurled from between the Brucolac’s lips a horrifyingly snakelike forked tongue, which tasted the air twice, and then receded.

Uther Doul smiled slowly. Emitted a rare laugh. Then his face settled back into its impassive expression, and he proceeded to clean his spectacles with a handkerchief as he answered.

“Deadman Brucolac, you are a harder man to find than you think you are. Whereas I know that you are very adept at finding me. Why should I work harder than I have to?”

“So you admit that you’re a lazy bastard, then.”

“I’m up past the witching hour. Isn’t that your favorite time for prowling? I’ve made myself available.”

The Brucolac sighed. “You’re still insufferable. There you sit, spouting sass at me with your straight face, and I just have to take it.”

“I contend that I do not, as you characterize it, spout sass. I merely speak the truth.”

“That’s exactly the sass I can’t stand, Uther Doul. And you know it. And you know that I know it, and that I’ll keep coming back for more, don’t you?”

From Uther, another gifted smile and a nod. “It is good to see you again, Deadman.”

In the darkness of the library two old friends reached across the table, each at the prompting of a knowing look from the other, and shook hands. A sudden, echoing THWAP! of a book falling from a high shelf near the back of the hall made one of the men jump, and cloak himself reflexively in a thin veneer of shadow. With their hands still interlocked, Uther tightened his grip – his pulse, if it had quickened it all, had done so infinitesimally.

“You weren’t lying when you said you hadn’t come just to see me?”

The Brucolac nodded in affirmation, his eyes wide.

“That noise… not just mice?”

The Brucolac nodded again, collected but tense. No.

“Come. Sit here with me,” said Uther, already clearing away his scrolls. “On the table. Back to back. Talk with me a while, and we will watch together. Tell me the news, old friend.”

“Things aren’t quite right, Uther,” the Brucolac whispered as he pulled himself onto the table, settling himself against Uther’s back. “I followed a strange scent here. That’s the first off thing, definitely not in the quite right. It’s not mice. It’s not khepri – they’re volumes of tastes unto themselves, but it doesn’t have the right tang. Hell, now I’m beginning to think I’m just imagining it.”

“Alright. That’s a good place to start. What else isn’t quite right?”

“Besides weird feral smells in the library? I was so damned pleased to see you I tried to forget the whole thing. But I think I hear something moving now Uther, and if I’m not mistaken a library is not a place for night creatures.”

“You’d be surprised,” Uther said dryly. “Do forget about smells, would you? What else is happening in Armada? Tell me what I’ve missed while I was away.”

“Really?”

“Please do.”

The Brucolac took a deep breath. “Where to begin. Garwater is still royally fucked up, Uther. When you left the last time the old President had just died, left no heirs, groomed nobody for her job. Shit poor planning, if you ask me. Nobody knew what to do. So Curhouse gets its fingers into the pie and decides that they’ll help set up an election for a new leader. It’s been anarchy ever since.”

“What went wrong?”

“Well, a Curhouse crony extraordinaire got voted in, but the people claimed the election had been fixed. Maybe that was the truth, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t blame them for being irate either way, really. The new sot was about one hundred eighty degrees from the old Madam President, and with the way Garwater loved that old madwoman I can hardly believe they would have voted in such a sap. They threw him out in the street within three days, intermittent rioting ever since. It almost makes me want to ride in on my white horse and show them the glory of benevolent dictatorship myself, but I have my own to care for. They’re more than enough trouble for me to handle, Uther.”

“Always wise to not go seeking trouble,” Uther replied, and, since the Brucolac could not see his face, smiled broadly. “The news from Garwater Riding is worrisome, though. I had hoped it would resolve itself.”

“Did you hear something?” the Brucolac whispered, and Uther felt the vampir’s muscles tense where the Brucolac was pressed against him.

“Yes. Do keep talking.”

“Alright. There’s been some gang trouble. Related to the rioting. Different factions supporting different figureheads in Garwater, seem to get along civilly enough by day. Night is a different story. My lieutenants have been harassed, which takes some serious gall, and in my opinion is gross reversal of a fundamental law of nature. Thankfully, I trained them well to beat the shit out of pitiful human assailants, such as yourself…”

Uther coughed politely, which the Brucolac knew was a secret signal of indignation.

“Well, except you, you inhuman fuck of a Doul. I know you’re proud as a little bantam cock of your pretty toy swords, despite your utter lack of bravado. No, the problem is cactacae toughs – scabmettlers, too. They aren’t so frightened of a vampir, though they should be. Gods, that’s one problem I’ve been trying not to think about. Then there’s also new graffiti – a little too worthy of artistic merit for the average street thug, which beats me. And an upswing in the homicide department, which might be the most worrying thing of all. Dry Fall hasn’t been hit too hard. Yet. Which is some sort of blessing. From what my lieutenants have seen of it, it seems to be same perp, or group of perps. Nasty, nasty killings with a calling card. Mutilations. Makes even me shudder a bit.”

“How many so far?”

“Eight incidents, twelve victims. Could be more. There’s not really an official count.”

“Related to your gang problem?”

“Don’t know. Maybe. Likely.”

“Give me more details later, would you?”

“Of course. Which means there will be a later?”

“Deadman Brucolac will cease to be himself the day he does not invite me to the Uroc for a nightcap.”

“Ah, but you know what they say: you can lead a Doul to a decanter of port, but can you make him drink?”

“I’ll drink to your exceptionally long life, Deadman, right after we give our greetings to whatever is haunting our library. It is very quiet now, but not too stealthy. If I may make an optimistic assumption, we might surmise that a truly dangerous predator would not give itself away by making such a din.”

“Unless it’s not quite at home here. Unless you think it’s just looking for a good novel? At three past midnight, Uther?”

“Hush. Now, be very still.”

In the darkness, a faint but distinctly audible scratching could be heard moving along the end shelves of the room. Then silence. Then, perhaps, a sibilant hiss of breath? Or the faint slither of a large object being dragged with care across the wooden floor. Uther’s hand reached toward his belt and sword hilt reflexively, but he remembered that his scabbard was empty – checked at the front desk by the night librarian. No weapons were allowed in a house of learning. His armor, his second skin, had been traded for a formal grey woolen jacket. No matter, Uther thought. There are other ways to fight, and he was not alone. The Brucolac had shrouded himself in shadows, abundant here and easily coaxed from nearby corners. The shorter, stockier man with prematurely graying hair and a hard, weather-beaten face might have been sitting on the desk alone, the clouded patch of darkness behind him his elongated silhouette cast by the oil lamp. Except that, by the placement of the lamp, the shadow was being cast in the wrong direction.

The sounds of the unknown presence indicated its methodical, unhurried circumnavigation of the room. After Uther and the Brucolac had been still for a long time, the sounds receded through the large archway Uther had entered hours earlier. Out of the corner of Uther’s eye: a writhing movement, black on black and difficult to discern, then only the wooden beam meeting floor at the corner of the arch, as it should. Without a word or a glance to each other, the two men stood and followed. The Brucolac snatched from a nearby table an oil lamp and taper of his own, pausing only to light it from Uther’s flame. The two men entered the labyrinth of corridors and reading rooms that composed the Grand Gears Library, guided by instinct and the signposts of pursuit.

“I can’t hear the bastard anymore, but I can smell him,” the Brucolac grimaced. “Dry. But… a fungal dry. Like old mushrooms.”

Uther sniffed, but with his weaker nose detected no scent. “He’s stopping and starting, which is why we can’t hear him now. But we should have caught up to him by now if he’s playing that game.”

“Well, the nose knows,” the Brucolac whispered to himself.

Down spiral staircases to the lower decks, along a circuitous route of intersecting corridors, up a dumbwaiter, each taking turns to operate the pulley (“How’d he manage that alone?” the Brucolac muttered.) and at last to a suite of little-frequented rooms where books on the most arcane topics were shelved.

“No exit here. Ready for anything?” Uther raised an eyebrow as he glanced at his friend.

“How do you know there’s no exit here?”

“Besides it being my business to know every exit? The last room is Ghosthead theory. End of the line. I’ve spent a bit of time here.”

“That’s an understatement if I’ve ever heard one.”

Uther did not reply, but held up finger to his lips in a gesture of silence. A low rattle could be heard emanating from under the last door in the hall. Even Uther could now taste a hint of dry rot and old orange peel in the air. The door was thick, constructed of aged oak planks. Under the sill, Uther could see the subdued flickering of a small light source.

“It must know by now that we are following. If anything is holed up there, it will be ready to pounce or flee when we enter,” Uther whispered.

“A knife for you,” the Brucolac hissed in reply, pulling a stiletto from a concealed jacket pocket. “Not that I need it.” His reptilian tongue flicked at the air in anticipation.

“Here we go.”

With a slam of the door that nearly took it off its hinges, the two men stepped into the small room. Uther and the Brucolac could see the entirety of the place, well lit by a single standard library lamp. The footprint of the room was barely larger than a closet, but the walls lined with bookshelves extended upward for twenty or more feet, terminating in a distant skylight. Two things were immediately apparent to the men – first, the fact that there were no living creatures present in the room beside themselves and second, centered in the glow of the lamp upon the reading desk was arranged a gruesome tableau.

Most of the books had been removed from the shelves and arranged in a neat circular wall, three feet high, around the central desk. On the desk was sprawled the lifeless body of a khepri librarian. She lay on her back in a pool of congealed ichor from the deep wound slashed across her neck, her clothing matted with gore, her arms outstretched and hands clawed in rigor mortis. One frozen finger was clutched to the lamp she carried in life. The other held (and Uther Doul’s eyes fixed on the object in a brief and troubled expression of recognition) what appeared to be a small spoked wheel, as from a child’s toy cart.

The Brucolac was the first to move. “Oh gods… oh gods,” he muttered as he gingerly stepped into the circle of books. Uther followed close behind.

“You didn’t smell her?”

“No. The other smell overpowered her. Oh… oh gods I smell her now. She’s been dead for hours, Uther.”

Uther Doul made no response, but approached the table and plucked the toy wheel from the dead woman’s hand, scrutinizing it closely. He then gently peeled back a corner of her unbuttoned blouse to reveal a second superficial wound in the center of her chest: a perfect, flawless circle.

“There’s nobody in here Uther. Unless it crawled out of a skylight which I can see is locked from the inside. But we heard it. I can still almost feel it in here, whatever the fuck it is. There’s been no humans, no xenians I know of here. Gods, gods just her. Her and it and you here, now.” The Brucolac seemed on the urge of a shudder as he met Uther’s stony gaze.

“Blood doesn’t bother you, vampir,” Uther said, calmly. “Death does not perturb one who breathes without breath. What’s been lurking here frightens you.”

“I’m not frightened, I’m merely concerned about an assailant who can walk through walls.”

“Don’t let it frighten you now. It has fled. How, we don’t know. Why, we don’t know. We will look, and learn, and soon we will know.”

“A scholar’s reassurance,” said the Brucolac without humor, stepping over the wall of books and turning his attention to the empty shelves. Uther took a last look at the body, shook his head with regret for the loss of the unknown woman’s life, and pocketed the wheel without showing it to his companion.

“Is this the calling card of your gang killings, Deadman?” The Brucolac did not answer, and Uther glanced at the vampir standing rigidly on the other side of the room.

“Deadman?”

“Read this, Uther.”

“Read what?”

“Come read this.”

Uther approached with his lamp held high. Upon the walls, between the empty bookshelves as if they were lines on a giant sheet of writing paper, were scrawled words. A message was repeated over in over in a confident capital letters, in a calligraphist’s hand:

NEVER ODD OR EVEN, OH MIRROR RIM HO! SPICED SOMNAMBULANT MISTRESS, SEAMSTRESS OF NIGHT, I THEE PRAISE. SO MANY DYNAMOS! REVIVER, REIFIER, FLEE ONLY TO ME.

The two men stared in silence for a long time. It was Uther who finally broke the silence.

“Well, it’s written in ink.”

“Would you prefer it to be written in blood?” the Brucolac said with irritation.

“Of course not.”

“That’s all you have to say, then?”

“So far. I have to think on it more to make anything out of it.”

“Godsdammit Uther. That is some fucked up writing. I have no idea what it means, but my first conclusion is that whoever wrote is fucked up. And killed a librarian for apparently no reason. Which is also fucked up.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Uther?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Uther?”

“Yes?”

“What are we going to do about this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah, I see. You don’t know.”

Somewhere on the far side of the Grand Gears library, a dark presence weaved its way between carts of books, unheard, unperceived by the two friends. The Brucolac sighed with resignation, and weakly punched Uther Doul on the shoulder. “So we’re up shit creek without a paddle. Business as usual, eh?”


	2. Dawn and Dusk (Pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP. NEVER GONNA LET YOU DOWN. NEVER GONNA RUN AROUND AND DESERT YOU. 
> 
> NEVER GONNA MAKE YOU CRY. NEVER GONNA SAY GOODBYE. NEVER GONNA TELL A LIE AND HURT YOU. 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
> 
> OP is delivering. This is part one of Dawn and Dusk. Part two just got posted, because late night Tuesday writing is where it's at.
> 
> Turns out when you have a real job writing is hard. But I'm staying strong y'all, this bitch is plotted and she wants to be written.

At the edge of Dry Fall riding, facing seaward, a sleek Crobuzoner clipper lived out the remainder of her days. Once known as the swiftest passenger ship on the Swollen Ocean, the _Calyptra_ still bore on her sides in flaking white letters the Needham Line’s familiar motto: “From Dawn to Dusk!” Now her suite of first class cabins found new life as fisherman’s quarters, her bank of sails stripped from the masts and her colors faded to a uniform, dreamy gray. Her figurehead however, a great green moth with wings outstretched in flight, was well maintained by residents or caretakers unknown. It was not unusual for early risers to see a human figure crouched upon the moth’s thorax in the half-light of dawn, obscured by the morning fog and swathed in a dark cloak. He never carried a pot of paint, yet it was a consequence of these crepuscular visits, the fishermen might tell you, that the great moth never seemed to suffer from disrepair. 

The Brucolac had withdrawn here, to his customary seat on the edge of the city, to cleanse his palate and collect his thoughts before his morning meeting with his lieutenants. A fair-and-foul taste still lingered on his tongue, cloyingly sweet and mildewy, impressed upon the roof of his mouth and his snake’s second organ of scent. It overpowered the ghostly smell of old books and khepri blood. It disturbed him. The sneer frozen on his lips was partly in disgust at this inner weakness, partly in distress at this pheromonal assault on the senses. He sucked greedily at the sea breeze, heady with salt and the aroma of fish entrails. These were safer funks, tinged with the iron tang of blood wafting from sleepers housed below. The Brucolac breathed deeply. He looked to the horizon and the hazy pink of approaching dawn, tracing with his restless hands eyespots, concentric circles on the green moth’s wing.

The librarian’s death had affected the Brucolac in a manner he was unaccustomed to. During his early days in Dry Fall (when a man could still rise surreptitiously through the ranks of the night watch, he remembered fondly) he had attended the aftermath of domestic disputes, fished anonymous bodies from the canals, and hunted Armada’s molesters and murderers. He had laughed, or cultivated an easy breed of anger that allowed him to sleep peacefully through the day-lit hours. Most criminals, he had decided, were not clever. They were humane or casually brutal, careless or incredibly circumspect, but always easy to parse in the end: motivated by greed, revenge, and rage. The body in the Grand Gears library did not conform to any of the Brucolac’s expectations. 

“She was meant to be seen, but not to be found,” he muttered to himself. Why would a murderer take such care in positioning the corpse, scrawl that signature note tens, hundreds of times, but do it all in a remote closet that nobody would ever check? Nobody except Uther, the Brucolac thought, guaranteed to return to his Ghosthead scrolls at some point. Or the Brucolac himself, certain to seek out Uther in his favorite haunt and to detect that redolent, nauseating odor trail terminating at the librarian’s body. What did the message mean? Not a warning, more like a… prayer? He knew of no Armadan gods that would demand such a sacrifice. Then there was the problem of the mysterious presence that hours ago flitted round the edges of sight and hearing. An unregistered vampir from some other Riding? That would be a godsdamned thorn in his side if it were true, but he couldn’t really bring himself to believe it. He was vigilant about policing others of his kind, and besides, that clumsy-clever movement, that noise, that smell were all wrong. 

“ _You_ move with silent grace,” he said, with a smile, “And I know you like the back of my own hand, because I made you, and we are now the same.” 

“And I thank you, Brucloac, for making me so beautiful,” whispered a woman who had stolen into the last of the shadows clinging round the bow in the waning night. His lieutenants were arriving. The Brucolac climbed from the figurehead up to the bowsprit with acrobatic ease, joining the woman as two other vampir approached quietly along the deck. 

“Ah, I had no part in that. The beauty is all yours,” he laughed, kissing her on the cheek. The other vampir appeared to be in her fifties, with crow’s feet crinkling at the corners of her eyes and long white hair framing her thin face - yet the strength with which she grasped the Brucolac’s hand in greeting belied a hidden vitality. “Antroz,” he murmured to his companion, and to the diminutive man and rugged looking young girl who had joined the meeting, “Craseo. Natalia. Day is coming on fast, so we’ll make this quick. What’s the night’s report?”

“Ho-lee shit. Mine ain’t gonna be quick. I’ve been run ragged all night,” sighed the girl. “Garwater… ugh. Riots. Riots from before sundown, going on late. The cactacae queen put out a print notice that Jhour guards would start patrolling the riding and enforcing law and order in the absence of any sort of Garwater policing effort. Starting last afternoon, people predictably went batshit over it, King Friedrich’s lot started putting out racist, sexist counter-propaganda fast as they could - ‘Oh no, you won’t let yourself be bossed around by a thorny old harridan, will you? Get them out the streets right now!’ - that sort of bullshit. And before you knew it… there’s at least two ships on fire, somebody’s been trampled during a demonstration march, shall I go on?” 

“No. Fuck,” the Brucolac said, putting his head in his hands. “Natalia… if it’s that bad I don’t know if I even want you out there anymore. At least not alone.”

“Fuck off. I can take care of myself.” 

“Fine. The intel is valuable, even if we can’t do anything about it yet. Anything else unusual? I mean, in the sense that anything might be more unusual than violent civil unrest?”

“Well…” Natalia paused, and started snickering. “You got burned in effigy in Tatterost Square last night. Congratulations!”

The Brucolac stared at her blankly. “What. What! What’d I do?!”

“Been a nosy prat sending me and the others to spy. Givin’ speeches about community values and strength through cooperation and such high-minded shit.”

“But… it is not clear that I _don’t want_ Garwater? That I do not want to annex it, I just want _somebody_ to take care of the godsdamned place?” 

The small man spoke up. “People are angry at anyone and anything. The city has not moved in a month.” And all present fell silent for a long moment. The glow of sunrise was imminent, an angry red that resonated in the minds of all present: sailors be warned. All knew that it was dangerous for the city to remain in one place for so long, at risk of discovery, stocks of fish and seaweed dwindling, trade utterly stagnated. 

“Let’s talk of other things, then,” the Brucolac reluctantly continued. “Antroz, you spent the night in Booktown, so you’ve probably already caught rumors of my wild goose chase…”

She nodded. “A librarian murdered. Mutilated. But not the killer we’ve seen before.”

“Insides-out killer ain’t struck in ten days. Maybe he’s gotten bored,” Natalia yawned. 

“But this one was still fairly awful,” said Antroz, looking to the Brucolac for confirmation. He grimly nodded. “The khepri will be in mourning today, and for three days hence. Guard sisters are posted at the library, and more will be searching the ships surrounding Grand Gears. There will be a funeral within the week, and we’ve been asked to attend in gratitude for the help we’ve provided in the investigation so far. The only other disturbance was an industrial accident at Arronax Lab. A researcher working late must have been careless, and got caught in the wheels of some sort of elyctrical engine and crushed. Didn’t go myself, but got the news from the foreman. Seemed like an open and shut case to me.” 

The Brucolac nodded. “You’ll be getting a brief on the librarian case before next night’s patrols. Men, women; sharpen your fangs. We’re going hunting in earnest for this son of a bitch. Final report: Craseo. You held down the home front. Did Dry Fall sleep peacefully tonight?” 

Craseo, soft-faced and soft-spoken, grumbled almost inaudibly, “Two kids around nine came cryin’ up to me saying their toy cart got stolen by a monster. Gave ‘em a sweet, sent ‘em home. Neighbor said she thought she saw a dog steal it from ‘em. That’s all I dealt with all night.”

Natalia and the Brucolac both struggled to stifle snorts of laughter. Antroz smiled. “It says a lot about our home that we are the ones approached to dispatch the monsters,” she said. 

The Brucloac took a deep breath. “And if we’d been seen in Tatterost Square last night we’d probably have been burned alive. You win some, you lose some.”

The sun was now poking over the horizon, probing the outlines of the _Calyptra_ with fingers of scarlet light. The vampir drew their cloaks closely around them and turned their backs to the spectacle. Antroz took the hands of her two fellow lieutenants, and turned to the Brucolac. “We must go. Send us our briefing by sundown and we’ll be ready to hunt.” All three gathered up the long shadows of morning, and clothed in a dark sun-touched glamour stole below decks at the Brucolac’s gesture of assent. 

The Brucolac himself chanced a final glance at the sun, and winced as it made his eyes water and sting. He threw an obscene gesture at the sky. “May no more people die tonight, gods-fucking-damnit. And may Uther and I have the pleasure of kicking some ignoble ass.”

By the time the _Calyptra’s_ fishermen were waking from dreams of their nets, the Brucolac was long gone. 

* * * * * * * * * * * *


	3. Dawn and Dusk (Pt. 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part two of Dawn and Dusk. We did Dawn. Now let's do Dusk.

The streets of Curhouse were stirring with subdued activity as evening fell. In better times one might have seen crowds of ladies in their finery, escorted by officers and merchantmen to the theatres or seaside promenades. There were still a good number of people about - families, strolling lovers, workmen returning home - but the atmosphere was less ostentatious. The men carried dirks, or even a small pistol or two at their sides, where they had been unarmed not long before. In the window of the Firewater Bar (Imported Coffee, Teas, and other Sundry Comestibles) Uther Doul turned his gaze from the street back to the newspaper he had picked up on his evening walk. In one corner of the shop an over-caffeinated cadre of physicians were arguing over the most effective amputation techniques; in the back, a poorly disguised member of the Curhouse council orated, in an even more poorly hushed voice, the virtues of a Garwaterian democracy... imposed by a wise and experienced outside leadership of course. The bar itself was crowded with students, each with a nose firmly planted in a book. It was a good place to surreptitiously catch up on local goings-on while remaining, oneself, largely unnoticed. 

The headline of today’s paper, Uther noticed without surprise, was the librarian’s death. There were few details, and no mention of the Brucolac or himself - the librarians had dutifully kept the press at bay. After a rough outline of the night’s events, the authors had turned to rampant speculation. 

_Has the inside-out killer struck again? This would mark the thirteenth death attributable to the murderer who has terrorized Armada for the past month. Although the killer’s motives remain unknown, the consistent treatment of his victims suggest the work of a deranged mind. The silence of Booktown administrators regarding last night’s crime is, in our opinion, confirmation of the familiar horror that last night played on the new stage of Grand Gears._

The article was illustrated with a crude picture of one of said victims. Uther studied it carefully, and decided that this was not one of the city’s more refined newspapers. Tucked alongside the column of text was a crude print of a man’s body, cut open from sternum to belly, surrounded by an elliptical array of his own heart, liver, lungs, intestines, carefully, almost artistically arranged. And he was laid on a bed of some kind of... flowers? Uther scanned the article and his eyes flitted to the word _heliotrope_. An odd choice. He’d seen it sold in the flower markets, but it was one of the more expensive varieties. Not that a murderer would feel any moral misgivings about stealing them. 

With one hand in his pocket he lightly fingered the toy wheel he had taken from the librarian’s body. In his mind’s eye he saw the disc of intestinal mesentery, splayed and stretched and shot through with spokes of arteries and veins. He had thought the little wooden token to be a sign meant for him, in conjunction with the defacing of Ghosthead books. He couldn’t discount the possibility entirely, especially as it so readily evoked for him such negative emotion. Welling up out of memory he saw the ubiquitous circle tattooed on the shambling half-dead, the signifier of their debased condition, as they passed through the city gates surmounted by the broken wheel of those noble enough to live and die and remain in death; the immaculate, the un-cycling thanati… No! Enough. It was too much of a coincidence after all. He focused his attention on the picture, cleared his mind, and began updating on his prior probabilities. He saw in the dismembered man a dark, mirrored image of the librarian’s posed corpse, meticulously composed, an elegant variation on a theme. The best case scenario was that the artist had entered a new period of experimentation. The worst was that they had a copycat on their hands. 

It was curious, and despite himself Uther felt drawn to the eerie beauty in those scenes. The words scrawled on the wall were palindromes - he’d recognized them almost immediately - but the meaning beyond the pattern was still obscure. He knew there was a logic to it, a beautiful puzzle waiting to be solved, and it almost made him eager to begin the hunt for this mysterious aesthete of flesh and flowers and books and blood… but he knew that he really shouldn’t get involved. The cold, calculating part of himself truly didn’t want to be involved at all. He’d come to Armada to search for new Ghosthead texts, not to play policeman. It would have been easy for him to ignore his morbid inclination but for the fact that the Brucolac clearly needed him. He’d seen how unsettled the Brucolac was last night, and had noted how much his friend’s confidence had rallied with the support of his own unshakeable composure. If the Brucolac asked him to fight by his side tonight, he couldn’t refuse. While Uther whiled away the afternoon drinking coffee and asking Why? he knew that elsewhere in the city plans were being set into motion by another asking Who? And how can we stop them? He smiled. That mindset of the Brucolac’s was both terribly admirable and proof of how much he needed Uther’s help. 

Uther took a sip of his coffee and peered back out the shop’s window, eyeing with pleasure the progress of the lamplighter along the street, setting small flames dancing against the encroaching darkness. He turned back to the newspaper and idly flipped through it, struggling to make out the print in the waning light while he waited for the shop’s proprietor to attend to the lamp near his table. He stopped. On the second to last page, in the bottom left hand corner, he saw his own face looking back at him. It was by no means true to life, but the essentials - the strong jaw, the reading spectacles, the direct gaze - were unmistakable. He quickly began to read the accompanying article.

 _As of this week, Armada is once again graced with the presence of itinerant scholar, sometime warrior, and overall meddler Uther Doul. Of course, our city remains indebted to Doul, with whose help several years ago we turned away a substantial Teshian attacking force - and who, with the backing of the Dry Fall vampir, destroyed a full company of razor golems and their handlers in the ensuing battle. However, we can’t help but point out that Uther Doul has arrived in Armada at a uniquely opportune moment. With a leaderless Garwater and a serial killer on the loose, Armadans are desperately looking for leadership. Will Doul attempt to fulfill that need? We remain suspicious of the true motives of a man who has never spent more than a full month in our city, and is thus classified in our eyes as a foreigner. Additionally, we cannot support Doul’s efforts to revive the dangerous practice of “probability mining,” a form of pseudoscience that should rightly be consigned to the trash heap of history along with the despotic regime that invented it. We urge our readers to keep an eye on this visitor, and remain aware that Doul’s benevolence to Armadans may be one side of a double-edged blade._

Doul’s anger was an icy, burning sensation near the back of his skull. He put the paper down on the table and folded it neatly. Looking around the coffee shop, now illuminated by the cheerful glow of oil lamps and candles, wreathed in the steam of a score of coffee cups, he watched the patrons going about their business of arguing and studying and telling jokes. Nobody had given him the slightest notice throughout the evening. Nobody looked at him now. A tabloid as shitty as this one probably had pretty low readership among the Firewater crowd after all. 

Before he could even begin thinking about the myriad ramifications of the article, let alone decide on an appropriate course of action to take in response, he was interrupted by a tapping at the window. He looked down to find a pair of wide eyes and a sheepish grin pressed to the glass. The Brucolac mouthed with the addition of unnecessary, dramatic pantomime, “I found you!”

Uther sighed.

There followed exaggerated running and violent stabbing motions. “Want to go fight bad guys?”

Uther picked up his coat, left money on the table for the bill, and strode brusquely out the door.


	4. Calyx; Corolla; Column

“Why are we taking an evening stroll in the park?” asked the Brucolac. A luminous moon swathed in tattered shreds of cloud hung over the deck of a decrepit steamer which rolled sedately on unseen currents, an island of verdant green in a latticework of wood and iron. Croom Park was far from deserted after sundown. When Uther Doul replied, his voice joined an evening chorus of singing crickets, and melded, musically, with the gentle burbling of Armadan shearwaters snoring in their burrows on the hillside above them.

“We are here to pick flowers,” he said, in an even and dispassionate tone.

There was a long pause.

“Why did we take the time to put on armor and tune up the incredibly powerful sword of doom if we came to pick flowers?”

“Because I’m hoping that a murderer will be here on the same errand.”

Another pause. “Right. Well, you do know that I already...?”

But Doul had stalked ahead, eyes to the ground, navigating a narrow trail worn down by previous explorers. The Brucolac had no choice but to follow, picking his way among brambles and ducking under boughs of silvery, shivering aspen that garlanded the path. Though the park proper was comparatively small, and the four adjacent ships increased the park’s length to a scant mile, it was surprisingly easy to get lost among the convoluted paths of the upper deck. The Ramble, as it was known to Armadans, was far from the open squares of the fore and aft decks, heavily wooded and treacherously scattered with sinkholes opening into the abandoned cabins below. The third of the ship’s six funnels, level with a canopy of spindly cottonwoods, was covered in kudzu and shedding rusted bolts, the detritus of civilization becoming slowly buried under layers of leaf litter. Nature was reclaiming what had been left unattended for so many hundreds of years. The taste of salt air, and the occasional glimpses of masts and rigging among leaves and branches was jarring.  

They continued in silence for some time, Doul inspecting the undergrowth with a focused intensity while the Brucolac trailed behind, managing a modicum of stealth, but clearly bored. The moonlight blanketing Croom Park was brilliant, casting long disorienting shadows of trees and tall grasses among which the men moved, semi-camouflaged. As they walked through an open clearing in the woodland the Brucolac could feel a slight prickling sensation on his cheeks, reminding him that the moon and her daughters were casting back secondhand sunlight. He shook his head, frowning at the thought of any new freckles, godsdamned fucking bitch sun. And while he’d paused, Uther had wandered far in the distance, a dim silhouette crouching among the undergrowth. That was it. The Brucolac scanned the meadow with impatience until his eyes alighted on a cluster of wildflowers, conspicuously pale and white among a bed of fallen leaves. He snatched them up, and hurried to catch Uther before he strayed out of sight.

“Hey. Hey! I’ve got your flowers!”

Doul’s glance over his shoulder changed from an expression of alertness to withering disinterest. “Wrong kind of flower.”

“Oh really? I thought we were looking for the rare and beautiful Uther flower, or, as you might better know it by the formal binomial, _Dumbassica doulia_.”

“Very funny.”

“But really. If you’re out looking for heliotrope, you’re wasting your time. I’m not stupid. I tracked down the source before you even got here. A great bunch of it was stolen from one of the flower seller’s shops quite a while before the murders started. He’s been doling it out at each crime scene since, and it’s been getting more and more rotten each time, so it’s only from the one stockpile. There’s been a lull in the killings, so he must’ve run out of supplies. I’m currently having every flower seller in the city monitored so that the bastard can’t get any more. And Jabber help whatever fool would attempt to gather every wayward flower in Croom Park, because I haven’t seen _one_ heliotrope plant all night. What we _should_ be doing is patrolling Booktown with my lieutenants to pick up on the trail of the library ghost.”

“I know you’re not stupid,” Doul sighed. “You are practical. You are efficient. And you are a damned sight too clever for your own good. But I think that our murderer, though clever, is neither practical nor efficient. I think he is singularly driven by a goal which we find opaque, but which to him is an imperative. So our plan tonight is to follow a thin thread of possibility, in accordance with a scenario in which our murderer is not at all deterred by the obstacles you’ve put in his path. Imagine: you have killed thirteen people, all in the same way. You have a design. You have a great and terrible purpose to your actions. Now the means to your end has been removed by a frighteningly effective authority. What do you do?”

“I give up, because it’s too much work to continue.”

“Wrong! There are two flaws in that line of reasoning. The first is human. You’re giving in to confirmation bias. Because the inside-out killer has not struck in some time, you are concocting an answer that matches your own preconceptions - that the killer has abandoned his goal, when in fact he may just be biding his time. The second logical misstep is distinctly vampir. You think like a predator. Every time you hunt (and you protest that you hunt no longer, but I know you’ve merely redirected that instinct towards nighttime patrols  like these) you work to maximize your net energy gain while minimizing your net energy expenditure. Predators are lazy, and if they weren’t, they wouldn’t survive. A lion does not pursue a single gazelle until one or the other of them drops dead from exhaustion. It knows exactly when to give up and turn its attentions to a weaker, more easily dispatched animal. Our prey tonight is not a predator himself, which is why you find him so disturbing. Our murderer is no mere killer. He is a creator. An artist isn’t bound by the constraints of an evolved optimization function. An artist is dedicated to a higher purpose, and will not, cannot abandon that pursuit without violent struggle or epiphany.” It wasn’t a lecture, coming from Uther. It was oratory. He might have been a cantor on the dais of a temple, the Brucolac thought, rather than a short man in leather armor, speaking softly in a copse of moonlit trees.

“So,” the Brucolac ventured, “Somewhere on this steamer we are going to find a homicide-garden. Because, in short, we are dealing with an unstoppable madman.”

“That’s the hope.”

“Well, fuck me.” The Brucolac crossed his arms and leaned against the nearest tree in a posture of gloomy contemplation. “But what does this have to do with the librarian?”

Uther had turned back to the trail, once again searching for some hidden sign known only to him. “The path is circular. We’ve traversed the circumference and ended up in the same place, which means there’s something hidden in the center…”

“Huh?” The Brucolac watched Uther noiselessly slip off the path and into the woods. “Oh, you mean you’ve just figured out that we’ve been literally walking in circles for the past hour. To reiterate, you could just ask me these things rather than working them out from first principles every godsdamned time…”

He had no choice but to follow Doul into the undergrowth, grumbling as he went.

* * *

 

The subtle fresh smell of volatile organic compounds (the smell of chlorophyll - the smell of green), the nearly imperceptible aroma of a hedgehog’s scent trail (perhaps half an hour old, the Brucolac surmised), and the complicated cologne of old parchment and lanolin and and coffee that characterized Uther Doul was fading away. In its place, something sweet and delicate, something familiar and almost comforting; the essence of vanilla with a buttery, rich hint of fresh-from-the-oven sour cherry pie, now dominated.

“No… it can’t be,” the Brucolac muttered. But he wasn’t mistaken. Doul was standing at the edge of a clearing covered almost completely in deep green foliage that positively ate moonlight, a reflective void fading to dusky obscurity, making motion on the edge of the field of the flowers indistinct, a quavering of leaves like blackbird’s wings in the night breeze. The scent of the buds, only just beginning to burst into purple splendor, was overwhelming. There was enough heliotrope here to supply their murderer for weeks. And it was tended, too, the Brucolac could see. A pile of weeds had been placed at the base of a tree to his left. There was even an abandoned watering can sitting on a stump near Uther’s feet… “This is officially insane.”

Doul turned to him, and a slight tic at the corner of his mouth was all the Brucolac needed to detect the suppressed smirk. “Don’t you start. You keep your smug mouth shut. You let me figure it out from here.”

The Brucolac paced around the clearing, back and forth, leaning forward slightly and letting his tongue lap up the the cloying scent of violet heliotrope until he was almost overwhelmed by it - in such close proximity it felt like a perfume-soaked cloth was pressed against his mouth and nose, making it almost difficult to draw breath. It had been even worse at the crime scenes he had visited, with the reek of blood and vegetable rot contributing to the permeating, olfactory smog…

“This has everything to do with the librarian,” he gasped. Uther, who had been quietly observing, raised his eyebrows. “Fine. This might have everything to do with the librarian. When we’re practicing inference we don’t deal in absolutes until we have a sufficient amount of evidence… et cetera, and so on. But this is the oldest trick in the book. How do you confuse a bloodhound? You dump creosote, or dog urine, or, even better, a combination of strongly smelling stuff in one place, and hope that the handler isn’t smart enough to lead the dog around to find your escape trail. No matter how much you try to cover it up, you always leave your own scent leading away from the scene unless... oh my gods. Uther.” He walked back to his friend’s side, now wringing his hands; as he realized what he was doing, he stopped to grip Uther’s shoulder hard. “Unless we’re dealing with an assailant who can walk through walls. It’s not art, it’s a decoy.”

“It’s art _and_ a decoy,” Uther replied, reaching for a pocket at his belt and withdrawing the toy wheel. He rotated it in his fingers, holding it up to frame the swollen, round moon. “Two sides of one coin. Everywhere I look I see circles. You know what’s unique about heliotrope besides its smell? Its flowers follow the arc of the sun throughout the day.”

The Brucolac’s eyes looked like they would almost pop out of his head. “Don’t tell me you got that wheel…?”

“At Grand Gears.”

“So he walks through walls and steals from children,” the Brucolac murmured. “And  heliotrope turns towards the sun, which I should have known because it’s the fucking _name of the plant_. Of course. Godspit and shit. I think I’m really beginning to loathe this guy.”

“But now we have a lead,” Uther said, his tone communicating subdued pleasure. “He is bound to come back here. The crop is almost ready, and the night is young. We have only to wait.”

“Then let the stakeout begin,” the Brucolac replied eagerly, punctuating his declaration with a hearty slap on Uther’s back before he disappeared among the trees, in search of a suitable blind from which to watch the clearing.

* * *

Two hours later the moon had traveled some distance eastwards across the sky. Drifting across Croom Park on the winds of a warm Armadan summer night, a butcherbirds’ duet echoed like a pair of flutes, belling and trilling in such perfect harmony that the casual listener would easily mistake the two for a single bird. It was a love song, a nightly reaffirmation of a pair bond that would keep them close throughout their lives. From a shadowed terrace above the field of flowers Uther Doul listened with eyes closed, a small smile impressed upon his face.

“You know, they’re the terrors of the natural world. They eat anything that’s smaller than them that moves. Tear it apart and store the shredded bodies for snacks later. That’s why they’re called _butcher_ birds,” the Brucolac snickered.

“They’re virtuosos. No duet is ever the same, yet they never miss their partner’s cues,” Doul whispered in reply.

“So they’re predators _and_ artists. Is that what you are then?”

“Mmm.” Uther didn’t bother to open his eyes, or move from his position, tucked among the buttress roots of a rogue tropical fig growing among the alders.

“Why won’t you talk to me?”

“Because it’s stupid to talk during a stakeout.”

“You know that’s not what I mean, I’ll hear him coming a mile away,” the Brucolac groaned. “Why have you been cutting corners tonight? We work better together when we communicate.”  

Uther’s eyes opened to slits. “I want this adventure to be over quickly. I’ve had enough of getting into unnecessary trouble, and I feel like I have more important things to be doing than hunting killers.”

“Like what?”

“Talking to you, for instance.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, you are the most frustrating, idiotic, son of a bitch…”

“Unconstrained. At length,” Uther interrupted.  “When we’re not on patrol, or a stakeout, or weathering a lull in a battle. Not about the transient problems of the city; about enduring things.”

“Then why don’t you stick around for longer than a few days after we’ve come out of crisis mode? Why do you show up every few months, do exactly what we’re doing now, enjoy brief public adulation, become weirdly reticent, disappear without warning, and repeat, ad infinitum? You’re a fucking hypocrite when you say things like that,” the Brucolac snapped. He turned his back on Uther and allotted his full attention to the field below, feigning indifference but clearly fuming.

Uther remained expressionless, eyes closed again, listening to the soft whistle of a pygmy owl playing counterpoint under the butcherbirds’ song. The stillness of the evening settled in between the two men, each pretending not to notice the other.  

“Look,” the Brucolac said, breaking the silence that had dominated for what could only have been a few minutes, but felt like much longer. “That was cruel of me. I know you’d never show it, but I can tell, you know. I embarrassed you, and I’m sorry.”

Uther hardly stirred. He stared nonchalantly at the vampir as if gauging his sincerity.

“Here. A peace offering. I kept a specimen of _Dumbassica doulia_. You can press it in one of your books. It’s actually quite lovely. See?” He plucked the flower from his breast pocket, where he’d stashed it earlier as he’d jogged through The Ramble. “It’s a good flower for you, I think, because it’s not even a proper flower. I mean, look at this. What is this shit? It’s all convoluted and crooked, none of these weird projecting bits even make sense, and it looks more like a squashed insect than a plant. But it’s because it’s different and it makes you want to figure out how it works that it’s beautiful. And it’s because it’s so strange and rare that I value it. I mean, I don’t know if this flower is actually rare, seeing as I literally picked it up off the ground at random. But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend that it is.”

The Brucolac proffered the flower to Uther with the same air of grace and charm he would put on for a lady in a Dry Fall salon. Uther stared skeptically for several seconds, and then began to laugh softly. “It’s a proper flower. The projecting bits are merely highly modified homologues of the parts of a more familiar flower. It’s an orchid.”

“Could you translate that into simple Salt please?”

“Come sit down and look at it more closely,” Uther beckoned. The Brucolac settled himself among the roots and fallen leaves at Uther’s side, holding up the flower before his eyes. “Flowers are made of whorls of serially homologous elements arranged radially around a central stem. Before your eyes glaze over completely: flowers are circles, and each part is made of the same stuff, but a little differently. In a heliotrope flower, there are little green petals cupping the purple ones - those make the first and outermost circle, or the calyx. In the orchid, the calyx has opened up and extended outward to frame the flower, like so. It’s more delicate this way, but much more eye-catching. The second circle is inside the calyx. The three petals make up the corolla. In the orchid, the bottom petal is modified into a landing pad for a bee. And the third circle is right here in the middle. In a normal flower you would be able to see the male and female parts, since almost all flowers are hermaphrodites. But the orchid has fused them into a column. The bee must bump its head against this structure, just so, to collect the pollen and carry it to another flower.”

“Seems like it would have to be a pretty smart bee to figure all this shit out.”

“In all likelihood there is only one species of bee in Armada that will visit this plant. An orchid is so specialized that it can only attract and manipulate a very specific pollinator. In time, the bee’s body will change to match the structure of the flower in turn.”

“So it’s a complicated relationship, but they work together,” the Brucolac said, a smile beginning to spread across his face.

“Exactly.”

“And they make something new and beautiful, just by doing what comes naturally. Now that’s what I call..”

“Coevolution?” suggested Uther, but the Brucolac continued enthusiastically without pause.

“Art! See? I appreciate beauty. The good kind. I’m not just a soulless predatory animal. I’m a very complicated predatory animal with sophisticated tastes and a heart of gold.”

Uther looked momentarily stunned, and then, quite uncharacteristically, began to chuckle, and then to laugh with genuine mirth. It changed him - a certain stiffness in his bearing fell away, only noticeable in the first place by the effect of its absence. He gently took the the flower from the Brucolac’s hands and, as his laughter died away, attempted to tuck it into the buttonhole of his lapel - when he realized he was wearing a leather breastplate, he began to laugh even harder. The Brucolac’s own smirk erupted into a full-blown cackle.

“Here, give me that, you’re fucking hopeless.” There was fumbling, a brief fight over the flower as it changed hands several times. It ended up behind Uther’s right ear, amidst a cascade of uncontrollable laughter that drowned out the sounds of the butcherbirds, a quarter-mile distant.

“You do… have a strikingly beautiful heart,” Uther began to say, turning to the Brucolac as he caught his breath. But the Brucolac didn’t hear him.

“Shh! There’s somebody down there,” the vampir interrupted in a hoarse whisper. “In the field. He’s come!”

At the bottom of the terraced hillside, a rustling among the vegetation was visible in the slanting moonlight. The movement was too large and too obvious to be that of one of Croom Park’s coyotes or dwarf deer. The Brucolac’s attention was entirely focused on the intruder below. He crouched low to the ground, his muscles taught and his posture eerily pantherlike as he began to creep down the hillside. Uther’s crestfallen look went entirely unnoticed - not that it lasted long. In the space of a measured heartbeat he was following, his hand trailing instinctively to the hilt of his sword.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which it becomes increasingly apparent that the author is a biologist... fo' real, guys.
> 
> Bonus content for this chapter includes:
> 
> Duet of the Pied Butcherbird, as heard in Croom Park every summer night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMotkPv1eMw
> 
> Darwin's Fertilisation of Orchids AND his grandpapa's excellent book on the sexy bits of flowers. Charlie D's book is just fucking excellent, and Darwin Sr's poem is... pretty steamy. Mmhmm:
> 
> Orchids can be found here - http://darwin-online.org.uk/  
> Sexy plants here - http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9612


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